Business travelers, as well as many other types of travelers, wish to maintain the presentability of their garments using simple, ergonomic luggage, which will maintain the appearance of their clothing and minimize the wrinkling that occurs during transport.
However, in recent years, the state of travel has changed appreciably, complicating the travel process for users. Many of these new travel challenges have arisen from the increased and more involved security procedures. These revised security procedures have placed more stringent restrictions and limitations on the size, weight and contents of travelers' luggage and have required travelers to intermittently present their luggage contents to security personnel. With these added complications, travelers, now more than ever, desire simple, ergonomic luggage, which, wherever possible will ease the strains of travel. Common forms of luggage for transporting clothing and other personal items are suitcases, garment bags, backpacks and the like. While many forms of luggage are known, new inventions must address today's modern set of travel needs, and must equally consider the ergonomic and practical utility for the ever-broadening range of travelers.
A high-priority need of business travelers in particular is the ability to maintain the presentability of their garments over the course of the traveling process. While, this need is not exclusive to business travelers it is in all regards unmet in today's market.
The greatest challenge when it comes to maintaining the presentability of garments is the prevention of wrinkles and creases during transit. Wrinkles and creases are caused when a fold is made in a garment and localized pressure is applied. The prevention of wrinkling and creasing a top priority for many travelers. Most often the prevention of wrinkles and creases is achieved through a collection of techniques known as ‘flat-packing’. ‘Flat-packing’, as the name implies, can be roughly described as the arrangement of clothing primarily along its coronal plane, where what is commonly known as the ‘front’ and ‘back’ surfaces of garments are mated together. Garments in this configuration are layered upon one another and stored flatly as a group during transport. This sandwiching of garments provides distributed support to each of the garments while in transit, and prevents individual garments from being wrinkled or creased.
‘Flat-packing’ is most successful in the prevention of wrinkles and creases when the interface between garments and the luggage containing them is relatively flat and even, and the area between the garments and the luggage is minimized. This allows for consistent pressure to be distributed lightly across the whole of garment surfaces and for the garments to approximately retain their designated configuration while in transit. This is to say that garments typically weather transport best when uniform pressure is applied and the garments are snuggly sandwiched during travel.
In everyday life, however, it is not easy to carry flat pack clothing successfully. It is when garments can shift, are improperly secured, or are up against uneven elements, that they become wrinkled or creased. These wrinkle-causing elements are often aspects of the luggage design itself and are not within the control of the traveler.
When considering luggage designed to maintain garment appearance, the related art primarily addresses the need to transport garments of the business suit variety (4736839). When compared to today's array of acceptable business attire, business suits are not the contemporary choice for most business travelers. Today, acceptable business attire for women and men often may simply include a pressed shirt and a nice pair of pants or skirt, rather than a business suit. These and other similar garments are typically less bulky than business suits. Nevertheless, the professional appearance of these types of attire must be preserved. Unfortunately, the lightweight nature of the average pressed shirt or skirt makes these garments more prone to wrinkling and creasing when in transit.
Studies have shown that an increasing proportion of women are traveling for business, which indicates a need for luggage which is ergonomically acceptable for women and which can successfully transport female professional attire. Studies have also indicated that now more than ever before travelers are opting to take shorter trips, more frequently in both the business and leisure categories. These facts further illustrate that luggage designed to transport a business suit, or business suits, are not addressing the needs of many modern business travelers, many of whom may be traveling with few garments but who nevertheless wish to maintain each garment's appearance.
On the whole, the related art does not combine the ability to pack, carry and transport theses types of garments with ease and without wrinkling or creasing the garments.
In some cases, unnecessary wrinkling and creasing is caused when a user's garments are, on average, much smaller in proportion to the luggage storage area, and therefore require less space than a traditional business suit. The packed garments then ‘swim’ inside of the luggage during travel and after transport, this ‘swimming’ has caused wrinkles and has degraded the appearance (3811543, 5060795, 5469967, 6076666).
In other scenarios, it is the case that the user's garments are on average larger in proportion to the available packing area. In this case the garments must be folded in order to fit. This creates creases and wrinkles in the garments (5624026).
In a related aspect, historical attempts to design luggage for universal use (designed to be large enough, long enough, and wide enough to fit every possible size of garment), the value and universality of this type of luggage is limited and the result is that some user's garments are too large, while others too small. Other related art has included extensions and other design aspects to achieve broadened usage but which instead complicate the packing process (5060795). Given today's modern travel demographics, the result is often luggage that is bulky and burdensome on the user and in the end causes wrinkles and creases in the garments.
Another cause of wrinkles and creases is when garments are inadequately or improperly secured because a necessary mechanism is not provided to prevent the garments from reconfiguring in transit (3115959, 3811543). This presents at least two problems. First, clothing smaller or thinner than a suit, which is more difficult to secure satisfactorily, does not stay in place and the appearance is not maintained. Secondly, if not properly held in place, garments of any type will shift and become wrinkled. Additionally, some inventions have attempted to provide unique securing mechanisms for garments which in effect complicate the packing process (4736839, 5566797, 5819890) and in other cases the effectiveness of the invention relies on a user-supplied apparatus, such as a hanger (3811543, 6076666).
Another aspect of design found in the related art that causes wrinkling and creasing are the sharp folds in the flexible portions of the invention itself. These folds are traditionally designed to make the luggage smaller overall. These folds, however, also fold the incorporated garments at a sharp angle, creating creases in the garments during travel (5469967, 6830148).
There is also related art which provides multiple means for carrying the luggage during transit. Examples of these carrying means include straps, handles, yokes and the like. In some cases, these multiple carrying modes also change the orientation of the apparatus when switching from one mode to another, resulting in an undesired redistribution of the contents, which then results in wrinkling (4655343, 5819890, 5884737).
There are also additional factors which play a role in the design of a successful piece of luggage, many of which related to the difficulties facing modern-day travelers. The unique needs of today's modern day traveler include but are not limited to the following:
First, it is now the common practice that the quantity of luggage per traveler is restricted; therefore individual pieces of luggage must serve many purposes and hold a variety of travel items, especially luggage which will be ‘carried-on’ with the traveler. Also, with travelers taking shorter, more frequent trips, ‘all-purpose’ luggage holds significant value.
It is a particular disadvantage of the garment-bag style related art that it is not ‘carry-all’ in nature, meaning that either the luggage cannot transport items in addition to ‘flat-packed’ garments or in an equally unfortunate scenario, if garments are not packed in the ‘flat-pack’ style, this type of luggage cannot be used more generically so that garments and other items can be transported using an alternative packing scenario. In both cases another piece of luggage must be used by the traveler. This reduces the value and usefulness of such related art (5259539, 6076666, 6830148).
Second, the personal security of the traveler's belongings is a significant concern during travel as well as being a regulated responsibility by governmental authorities. In many airports and train or bus stations, “please keep luggage with you at all times”, is a frequently heard announcement and is prominently displayed on official signage. This requires that luggage be both tracked and tended to by the owner throughout the travel process. Intermittent access to luggage contents by the traveler is often necessary during security screenings and at other times during the travel process. In light of the heightened security restrictions, it is another disadvantage that related art examples do not allow for intermittent access to their personal contents during transit in a fashion that is secure and private. For one, traditional garment bags fold downward and do not provide intermittent access to the items (4736839, 5060795) and other forms of garment-style travel bags also do not provide intermittent access to the user's possessions (4655343, 5624026, 6830148, 6076666). For another, those which do provide access, many do not provide privacy (3115959). Additionally, other types of travel bags that provide intermittent access also cause a reconfiguration of garments in a manner that causes them to wrinkle or which requires the user to rummage through the luggage contents.
Third, on the whole, the travel process has become more involved, and is in general a difficult process to manage for most individuals. Today, this process often includes, “check-in”, document-control and multiple security screenings. It is also common that at multiple points during this process, various possessions must be removed and presented for inspection. These steps in conjunction with the entire travel process can be physically taxing and difficult on the body.
Effective use of established ergonomic design principles can minimize the impact of such repeated loading and carrying of luggage on the human body. Ergonomic consideration of a traveler must also consider that her or his physical needs may change over the course of the product's lifetime. For example one's physical needs and capabilities may change as a result of age, pregnancy, or injury.
It is also important to consider that an increasing proportion of business travelers are women, significantly greater than in previous periods. The ergonomic needs of adult female bodies are distinctly different than adult males and this must be taken into consideration. Furthermore, travel luggage today, more often needs to accommodate unique categories of travel items and attire used more frequently by women than men.
Ergonomic user-considerations are very important when the traveler is in transit. There are factors that inform the ergonomic design of any object utilized by humans. A general ergonomic principle when carrying any load is to, “Hold the load as close to the body as possible in order to limit both mechanical stress and energy consumption.” (Dul & Weerdmeester, 2008). Some additional ergonomic tenets relevant to this invention include the consideration of; the overall weight, the distance from the body's joints, the carrying orientation and the self-supporting nature of the travel pouch, each of which must be taken into account.
From an ergonomic perspective it is preferable to provide a supportive, reduced weight piece of travel luggage which can accommodate a variety of garment sizes while preventing wrinkling because bulky luggage is cumbersome during travel and is generally difficult on the body.
In the related art, the absence of beneficial ergonomic principles are manifest in a variety of ways.
For one, ergonomic principles are not often employed to allow travelers to carry travel luggage in healthy ways. This is first evident in that many design do not allow for the invention to be carried using straps which go over the shoulder or across the back (5624026). In addition there are also inventions that provide such carrying means, but which are non-ergonomic (3115959, 3811543, 3958675, 5884737) and potentially harmful to the user.
Furthermore, many inventions do not provide multiple means for carrying (5259539, 6830148). This is important as users should be provided with multiple carrying options so that the weight may be redistributed by the user as needed throughout the travel process. This is also important as the user may need alternative carrying means at different points of the product's lifetime.
There are additional aspects of an invention which do not allow the user to transport luggage in healthy ways, for example, related art, with the ‘fold-down’ embodiment brings the weight out further than necessary from the shoulder (47736839, 5505297), which puts unnecessary stress on the user's joints.
“Small compact loads are preferable to larger loads” (Dul & Weerdmeester, 2008). Luggage which is over-sized, and unnecessarily large, perhaps designed to accommodate a wide set of users, puts unnecessary stress on the user's joints (5884737). Bulky, unstructured luggage also takes it toll on the body by not being to some degree self-supporting, causing eccentric loading on the body's joints and adding unnecessary torque.
Another ergonomic-related issue is the presence of rigid members such as bars, beams, and the like, which are designed to provide structural support to the invention, but which exert concentrated stress on the human body when transported or carried (3958675, 5871133), potentially causing harm or injury to the user.
It is also important to consider the ergonomics at times other than when the traveler is in transit. An example is the space required to pack and unpack the invention with belongings. In hotels and at home there is often not a lot of table space to extend luggage widely for packing and a review of related art reveals inventions which have not made design considerations for this need (4927014, 5566797, 5819890). This may be both an inconvenience for the traveler but also may instigate cumbersome body positioning from the user.
Finally, storage space in homes is for many users often limited and when not in use, many styles of luggage take up more space than necessary (5505297, 5884737). Many styles of luggage which are rigid in nature, do not allow for compact storage when not in use (4736839, 5505297).
In conclusion, an examination of related art and market need does not reveal an invention which addresses both the current set of traveling restrictions and provides suitable solutions for the increasingly diverse set of travelers. This examination has indicated a need for ergonomic luggage used to transport business or formal attire and which is suitable for a broad range of business and casual travelers. It is not impossible to address all of these many design challenges in a comprehensive and satisfactory way. Unfortunately, simple and satisfactory solutions are not present in the prior art.